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Glite Dictionary
to crop out

to crop out

8.4
To appear at the ground surface as a rock or mineral
  • phrasal verb
  • Specialized
translation icon : aflorar
  • During the excavation, they found that the valuable minerals had cropped out at the surface.

Examples

  • The scene itself occupies about four feet in the center; in reproductions, the blank portions on either side, which extend upward to give the plate a truncated U shape, are typically cropped out.

    Academic text (2012)

  • In the mountains, granite can sometimes crop out from beneath the soil.

  • As we hiked along the trail, we noticed that the sandstone had begun to crop out along the cliffs.

Synonyms

to outcrop
vsto crop out
  • Specialized
7.5

To come out of the ground so rock can be seen

is written as two separate words rather than one

How Exposed

to protrude
31 5.8
to crop out
  • Specialized
8.4
to emerge
249 3.5
to surface
143 3.9

Surface Forms

crop out infinitive
cropped out past
cropped out past participle
cropping out present participle
crops out third person singular

Morphology

crop + out

The particle 'out' conveys emergence/exposure, which partly signals the MWE meaning, but the provided sense of 'crop' (to cultivate/harvest) does not directly mean 'appear'. There is a related verbal pattern (crop up/out; outcrop) that gives a metaphorical sense of something coming to the surface, so the relation is partly recoverable but requires some exposure or domain knowledge, especially in geological usage.

Etymology

Crop out comes from a simple picture: when soil is removed, a rock or layer seems to crop up and out of the ground. So, it now means 'appear at the surface'.